An increasing amount of food products are processed before arriving on a consumer's plate. A variety of fruits and vegetables, for example, are cut or shaped and then frozen or otherwise preserved for later use. In order to meet the demand for processed food products and efficiently produce large quantities of such products, the food industry utilizes various apparatuses that rapidly process large amounts of foodstuff. For example, apparatuses for cutting and shaping large quantities foodstuff are well known in the art and typically comprise a stationary array of cutting knives with a means to propel the food product through the knife array. The food product may be propelled through the knife array by entering it in a fluid stream. In the alternative, the food product may be propelled by mechanical or pneumatic means or by means of a hydraulic plunger.
A typical hydraulic food cutting apparatus in use today has a receiving tank filled with a hydraulic carrier fluid, typically water. Foodstuff is placed into the tank and suspended in the carrier fluid. The suspended food product is pumped from the tank into a segment of tube. The tube aligns the suspended food product with the cutter blade assembly, which typically includes a plurality of knife blades mounted parallel to each other. If the food product is to be cut into slices, only a single such array need be utilized, however, if the food product is to be cut into elongated, slender pieces, such as French fries, or wedges, two such arrays are utilized with the knives in one array extending generally perpendicular to the knives in the other array.
The cutting apparatuses of the prior art utilize straight knife blades. For example, the use of a plurality of straight knife blades stacked perpendicular to one another in a cutting apparatus in order to produce wedge-shaped pieces of foodstuff is known.
There is a need for a cutting apparatus for producing large amounts of tapered or concave wedges of foodstuff. The concave surface of a tapered, concave wedge of foodstuff holds an increased amount of topping or garnish, as compared to the wedges of the prior art, which have planar surfaces.